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Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

mashable.com

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Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#131

Post by ceejayoz »

stordoff wrote: post #49

> If you’ve made more than 10,000 USD (approximately 7,800 GBP) in sales on Etsy in a 12-month period [...] you’ll be required to participate for the lifetime of your shop That's not exactly what I think when I read "biggest sellers". That seems like a remarkably low cutoff. Also, if you don't need/want to grow and/or you have low margins, this could wipe you out. 12% revenue of _any_ orders within a 30 day period of…

I’ll bet they’ll also be targeting very specific “Jane Doe’s Etsy store” style keywords where the top organic result was already the right one and there’s no competition for clicks.

Pay a few pennies, make 12% of the sale.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#132

Post by wccrawford »

paxys wrote: post #48
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system has no opt-out if you've ever gone above $10K in rolling 12 month sales.

How many sellers are doing more business than that though? I figure Etsy has better numbers on that than we can speculate.

My mom started selling hand-made jewelry locally, and then started an Etsy account. She started doing them for fun, and then realized she can make a little money at it.

A few years later, and I think she just barely qualified for that $10k this last year. So she went from pure hobby to being classed as one of the "biggest sellers" in just a few years.

I don't know how many people get to that point, but what she's doing isn't particularly unique. Literally anyone could do it if they have enough control of their hands and enough free time.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#133

Post by ceejayoz »

tomnipotent wrote: post #73
stordoff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On any sales within 30 days of an ad click. Genuine scenario from a few months ago: I'm looking at some shelving on Etsy, I mention it to my mother (using a specific seller's name) to double check it's right for what we need. She clicks the first Google result (which in this scenario could very easily be an Esty ad), and now Etsy are taking £12 extra from a £100 order without the seller being able to opt-out. For wha…

It's unlikely the Etsy ads will be targeting stores names, but generic terms they can match to their market place in real time. It's far more likely in this scenario, there will be little confusion between the generic text ad and the first organic link that clearly has the seller's name in it.

Why wouldn’t Etsy target popular individual store names? It’s a guaranteed financial win for them.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#134

Post by faintrain »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #40
faintrain wrote: post #13

[flagged]

For what do you shed tears? In your view, what would constitute lamentable treatment of small businesses?

No one is saying the treatment of small businesses isn’t wrong.

Instead this treatment is a fact of life. We can complain or we can change it.

The HN community complains about this sort of thing often but has been pretty unanimous in being anti-collective bargaining and anti-government intervention.

If you’re not willing to advocate for change but instead complain, why should we pity you.

1. Build your own infrastructure

2. Build your own platform

3. Or change your environment through advocacy

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#135

Post by vbs_redlof »

neya wrote: post #110

I know this sounds crazy, but for E-Commerce, you never go with all these third party "platforms" as your sole business strategy. 1. First of all, you can't differentiate much in terms of offering and most of the time, you're put in a position of having to compete by price if there are similar offerings in the same platform. 2. Believe it or not, it's only a matter of time when other sellers (particularly from CN) wi…

Curious, what do you think of Sellfy? It gives you email lists, and analytics.

I'm currently building an e-commerce platform like Etsy, and tossing up some ideas of what kind of features to provide for sellers with respect to their brand, email list, and analytics, paywalled content etc.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#136

Post by tyingq »

MicahKV wrote: post #67
faintrain wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your options? 1. Build your own. 2. Collectively organize with other Etsy shop owners to advocate with Etsy leadership. These type of policy changes aren’t a surprise anymore, no? We’ve seen them from Apple, Facebook, Shopify, Twitter, Amazon, EBay, etc for more than a decade now.

They are not a surprise, no. I have wondered before what marketplace sellers could do in the way or organizing/unionizing.

A coordinated day where they all pause sales listings, say during an earnings call, might get attention. Especially if you get some financial reporters advance notice. Even if participation is low, some analyst is likely to ask about it in the earnings call.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#137

Post by itronitron »

stuartc842 wrote: post #75
adrr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the original model but that doesn’t really scale. It’s primarily another channel for mass manufactured stuff that your can find on aliexpress.

example of an item that smells like aliexpress to me: 2'x4' painting for $160, ships from china, comes in 6 different sizes https://www.etsy.com/listing/637298037/original-sea-waves-oi...

I'd put that right in the middle of the 'hotel art' category. They should also advertise it as being stain resistant.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#138

Post by distances »

officialchicken wrote: post #128
brnt wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always had the feeling this is a consequence of business and legislative culture. The US seems to favor large near a monopolists (Amazon, Walmart, two or three network operators, Facebook) and consequently people regard those places as semi-public fixtures of the environment which one cannot do without. Whereas in Europe still markets are much more plural and its easier and thus more common to move your business. Whe…

> When people say Europe does not produce behemoths Volkswagon, El Corte Englais, Credit Swiss, Ubisoft ... there's at least a few in each member EU state, just like the United States

Large companies, but none of these are anywhere near forming a monopoly.

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#139

Post by pintxo »

barry-cotter wrote: post #108
QuesnayJr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not crazy. Being "a market" for a certain good is a natural monopoly -- there are economies of scale so that one market will inevitably drive out the others. I don't know if Etsy has reached that point, but it could someday.

There’s extremely limited evidence that natural monopolies even exist. The economic definition is when the efficient number of sellers in a market is one. That may be the case for airframes, see the endless subsidies for Boeing and Airbus to avoid that happening. But even a market like microchips where a fab costs tens of billions of dollars supports multiple sellers.

Extremely limited evidence?

How about water or electricity grids? Railroads? (City) Streets?

Re: Etsy sellers are furious over new mandatory ad fees

#140

Post by gnicholas »

tomnipotent wrote: post #83
mreome wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Margins aside, anyone selling hand-made goods has a very limited stock and can't really scale up production. What is the value of this advertising to a seller who is already selling at the rate they can produce goods?

> who is already selling at the rate they can produce goods? This is a pretty good question. If you sell handcrafted hard maple tables that go for $5k, it only takes two orders and you're suddenly coerced into a program. However, if that program leads to one sale more it only cost $500 - that's a pretty good ROI. The problem will be if Etsy is transparent and can demonstrate the incremental value of this service, and…

> if that program leads to one sale more it only cost $500 - that's a pretty good ROI

Not if you don’t have time to make another table...

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